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This one is another one from the massive pile that Auggy shared with me. I understand that the name refers to some sort of cake or something, and when I read the description...”
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From American Tea Room

Brioche’s astoundingly decadent aroma and flavor make it one of our best sellers. Even the dry leaves perfectly capture the spicy-sweet aroma of a Parisian patisserie with intoxicating, beguiling, tempting aromas of nuts, spices and an unrivaled baked sweet note.

The aroma and flavor of Brioche are rich, nuanced and reminiscent of hot cinnamon buns, almond croissants, fine black tea and warm brioche with a touch of marmalade. It has an equally enchanting aftertaste that lasts and lasts…

This superbly balanced blend stands on its own as an indulgence, or pairs beautifully with breakfast pastries and fruity after-dinner desserts (such as Linzer tarts).

182 Tasting Notes

I’ll try to edit and update this more later but i just wanted to track that i DID try this today. Thanks to tastybrew for sending some my way. I got home and i’m apparently sick as i’ve spent the last 4 hours in bed and don’t want to drink any tea. :( but this is good. delicious and i’m glad i have more + the resteeps once i get better. ugh.

Edit: Resteeped this today and it was still delicious. Soooo tempted to pick up a full 2oz of this with the sale.

whatshesaid….no :( sorry to get your hopes up. I was just going to try and order through my tea mule. No idea what shipping would be for ME to ship it from here to there for you, but if you wanted to see if it was worth it, i could add it to my order and send it your way or something… I’m sure we could figure something out.

Now that I am not expecting a sweet cinnamon bun-type tea, I am actually enjoying this much, MUCH more. It is nutty and bready and oh so delicious. It tastes just like a fresh piece of brioche bread. MMmmmmm…

This one is another one from the massive pile that Auggy shared with me. I understand that the name refers to some sort of cake or something, and when I read the description of it I was pretty excited to try it. This post is actually a backlog based on hand scribbled notes which I hope to be able to decipher, so this was one of the first of her lot that I tried.

The aroma of the leaves is awesome. It smells like fresh pastry, straight out of the oven. It’s nutty and sweet and warm and slightly spicy, and I was pleased to find that this goes for both the dry leaf and the steeped cup. Almost exactly the same aroma, actually.

In the flavour the picture was almost the same as before, with the same elements to it. It was still quite nutty and a bit spicy, but the pastry note was really the by far largest one of them all where before they had seemed more equal to one another. On the swallow and in the long aftertaste it turned all sugary sweet.

It was a very nice cup, but it’s not something that I think I could have more than one cup of at the time. One was good, but I think more than one, it would just become too much. It’s extremely richly flavoured, this.

I was excited to read about this tea – because I just made a brioche today! It is not actually a cake but a very buttery, sweat yeast bread. Really, it is the dessert of breads, but I can’t imagine the bread and the tea would be good together. Too rich.

This is tasty! Almond teas are one of my favorites so I knew I really wanted to try it.

The blend reminds me a lot of almond sugar cookie from Simpson and Vail, I wish I had the two so I could compare them side by side. I think the main difference is this blend tastes slightly more pastry like and the almond Sugar cookie seems a bit on the sweet side? It’s an enjoyable blend, almondy and dessert like. I tried adding a touch of stevia but I think I liked it better before the stevia, with just soymilk. I’m not really getting anything that reminds me of a cinnamon bun (per the description)

Don’t think I will have any problems finishing this one off, it’s good. :)

I used to bake a lot when my kids were young. My love of baking probably came from my Mom, who started making homemade WW bread as I reached my teens (early 70’s). There is nothing like the aroma & flavor of homebaked bread, fresh from the oven! I baked with my college roommates, & when my kids were young we baked together for years: Breads, muffins, scones, pita, pretzels (the big chewy kind), bagels, brioche, croissants, pizza crusts. We did it all, & I also had a sourdough starter (named Fred) that was especially awesome for making english muffins. I’ve been a slow foodie long before the movement started.

Sadly, I began developing (or realizing I had) food sensitivities that made my life & health unmanageable: sugar, dairy, yeast, gluten. It took a while to figure it all out, but I’m glad I did, because I feel fantastic now & think pretty clearly (except when it comes to ordering tea, LOL). But sometimes I really miss bread! Brioche is awesome, especially with orange marmalade or Apricot preserves…sigh… I make some pretty good things with almond flour, but it is not the same.

So this tea…a nice trip down memory lane. Brioche is a very rich bread, loaded with butter & eggs, kind of like Challah (yeah, I used to bake that too). Very airy, with a really nice crust. Sometimes we included raisins, cinnamon, & nuts, & amazingly American Tea Room has captured this nicely. The flavor is rich with a buttery yeasty flavor, with just the right amount of almond, a light dusting of cinnamon, & (I’m probably imagining) a hint of orange peel. I can even taste the crust. Thanks to TastyBrew for this trip down Memory Lane.

i have similar sensitivities as well as ridiculousness such as an allergy to turkey and coffee. i got used to rice flours and amaranth… i misbehave, but whenever my bad behaviour catches up with me i revert to my wheat and gluten free recipes.

good point though… i would likely behave better if i had my fixes through tea…. you are just full of good ideas, terri!

argh, i pile on weight with it. and get congested. corn is a bad one too… but it has a really strange allergic response that can be hard to identify. it heightens aggression. (ie one of the reasons that fights frequently break out at a corn roast).

at least i like rice flour. it’s harder if you dislike what you need to eat.

GMOs probably have a lot to do with it. Wheat allergies have been on the rise in the US for a number of years. Most other countries don’t allow GMOs.
I removed all grains & legumes from my diet 18 months ago, & immediately started dropping weight & feeling better. About a year ago I made the mistake of eating an English Muffin & suffered for 2 weeks with horrible gut aches, & numerous aches & pains including a resurgence of tendonitus, migraines, etc.
SO not worth it!

Thanks to the darling Sil for passing some of the infamous Brioche to me! I’ve been waffling on making an order for over half a year now, not really tempted by their other teas, hence thinking an order wouldn’t be worthwhile. But now I have to chance to see what all the fuss is about.

And I get it. The fuss. The dry leaf truly does smell bakery-like. Some bready notes with swirls of spice mixed in. As soon as I started to steep the tea, I picked up a waft of raisin bread, or like a very bready cinnamon bun jewelled with raisins. Actually, it reminds me of my grandma’s babka with a touch of spice.

The taste matches the smell, without a doubt. Without any additives, I can taste all of the components I listed above: the eggy bread, the raisins, the spice. This is basically what I hoped Della Terra’s Oatmeal Raisin Cookie would be like, except with more of a bready note.

I also appreciate that the liquor isn’t oily or murky from the flavouring. Is it order-worthy? Most definitely. But I’m not sure if I’d give it the title of the Best Dessert Tea, and don’t think it’s worth getting unless you can hit a sale on their site.

Speaking of which, ATR does have 20% off sale this weekend so I have the weekend to think about whether I should do it. This is the worst time to have a sale, though! I just told myself to cool it for a while until I get down to, I don’t know, like seventy or less teas again, and not sure if I’m willing to spend $70+ in order to counteract the shipping costs and make it worthwhile. Ho hum.

Haha that’s a good way of looking at it too. Luckily, there are enough that I would consider trying which, together, with say, 100g of Brioche and 50g of Brioche CF, would end up being in the $55-70 range anyway.

Well. Today’s the day. I now check the 35-40 box. Wow. That seemed so old when I was a kid, but as I still feel like a kid most of the time I’m not gonna think too hard on it :-)

I chose this tea as my first tea of the day because it has truly stood the test of time. It was one of the very first loose leaf teas I bought online and is still one of the best. Many short-lived favorites have come and gone, but this one never disappoints. So much like a breakfast pastry, it goes perfect with my breakfast sandwich. A good sweet cup to balance the salty. Yum.

I have a lot of new teas and samples I need to be sipping through and writing notes on, but I was craving this one today. Sometimes you just gotta drink what you are in the mood for you know? And today it is flavored blacks :)